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The battle for last-minute Christmas gifts began in the streets in and around Columbus
yesterday.

But congested roads and packed parking lots didn’t worry Joe Meyers, 43. The Columbus man and
his twin 8-year-old sons, all decked in Santa hats, raced through the Meijer supercenter on
Hilliard-Rome Road to buy stocking stuffers and Christmas dinner for mom.

“We’re just out,” Meyers said. “We don’t usually wait for the last minute, but we needed some
more things.”

Shoppers had six fewer days than last year to buy holiday gifts between Thanksgiving and
Christmas. And bad weather nationwide, including in central Ohio, kept many shoppers at home during
the two weekends before Christmas, according to ShopperTrak, a Chicago company that counts and
analyzes retail shopper traffic.

Even before the weather, 1 in 10 holiday shoppers had expected to wait until Christmas Eve to
buy their final gifts, according to the National Retail Federation. As a result, many retailers
were braced for a frenzy of last-minute shoppers this year.

“The place is wall-to-wall people,” Ken Barclay, store director for the Meijer in Westerville,
said during a break Monday afternoon.

Yesterday, the crowd in the Meijer on the Far West Side wasn’t bad, despite the store’s nearly
full parking lot, but it was still enough to form lines at 20 open checkout lines.

Adding cashiers and opening more checkout lanes is one of the Michigan grocery-store chain’s
strategies to get last-minute shoppers into and out of its stores quickly, Barclay said.

Meijer, which is open 24 hours a day except on Christmas, also brings in more of its workers for
the third shift, Barclay said. And it tries to “position those trendy items and gift sets as close
to the center aisle as possible,” he said.

The fact that Christmas falls on a Wednesday this year “messes with people’s schedules,” said
Chuck Palmer, owner of ConsumerX Retail Strategy.

“Being in the middle of the week, a lot of people are working and trying to shop,” Palmer said.
That makes the last-minute shopping “a little more frantic” than usual, he said.

However, shoppers are feeling better about the economy and their financial situations this year
than in recent years, Palmer said.

“We’re feeling like we can spend more, we can do more, we can get that extra bottle of wine for
the party,” he said. “There’s a sense of relief.”

Recent stock-market records, an upward revision in economic growth and the Federal Reserve’s
decision to stop supporting the economy in coming months might be adding to shoppers “exuberance,”
Palmer said.

Back at the Far West Side Meijer store, Colleen and Paul Thomson were “evening out” gifts for
their grandchildren in the toy department. While wrapping gifts, the couple had realized their
three young girls didn’t have the same number of gifts, said Colleen Thomson, 62, of Albany,
N.Y.

While she said last-minute shopping can be stressful, her husband, 63, was enjoying the energy
in the store. Christmas Eve shopping had been a tradition among friends while he was growing up,
Paul Thomson said. It was like a sport.

Ten miles away, cars swarmed on the Mall at Tuttle Crossing on the Northwest Side. Inside the
mall, about 100 children waited to sit on Santa’s lap before he made his rounds that night.

With several shopping bags on both arms, Ron Garver, 63, of West Jefferson, called his wife to
tell her about his great find for their grandson — a Kansas City Chiefs garden gnome.

“Today is the best time to do (holiday shopping),” Garver said. “The crowds were a lot worse a
few days ago. People were wall-to-wall in here.”

Garver likes to shop on Christmas Eve because of the discounts typically offered that day, he
said. His wife doesn’t always approve.

“My wife thinks I’m crazy,” he said. “On the phone she just said, ‘Get back and get the ham in
the oven.'"